The engine is out!

A few hours of leisurely tinkering

This weekend I found the time to remove more ‘bits n’ bobs’ off my now scantily clad Beetle, which in turn revealed more holes, gashes and copious amounts of unaesthetic rot! The funniest yet most frustrating moment occurred when I pressed down on the accelerator to loosen the throttle linkage and the pedal literally went through the floor and took a dinner plate size of rusty metal with it! Doh! I reckon at some point in Gretch’s hidden past she must have been repaired with cunningly disguised cream crackers! Oh well, looks like I need to add some new floor pan halves onto my parts list.

Anyway, all of the wings have now been removed, as well as the bonnet and are ready to be stripped back to bare metal. The oil has been bled from the sump in preparation for the engine removal. Oh, and most of the wiring has now been detached (and labelled so that I know where everything is meant to during the rebuild).

My good friend Sandro helped me get all the bits back to base (aka - the spare room in my house) in the back of his Beemer. Making everything fit was quite a task and did not leave much room for me to catch a lift!